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Hi, my name is Alex and this is Climate to Action, a California State University San

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Marcos student podcast.

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We're here to amplify voices, empower solutions to climate change, and address climate injustice

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for all living things.

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We are committed to incorporating discussions on Indigenous knowledge, in addressing the

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climate crisis, and in providing a call to action in every episode.

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But first, we'd like to acknowledge that our recording studio is located on the traditional

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territory of the Luisaño-Payum-Cuehicham people.

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CSUSM and its surrounding areas are still home to the six federally recognized bands

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of the La Jolla, Pala, Palma, Pichanga, Rincón, and Ceboba-Luisaño-Paya-Cuehicham people.

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It's also important to acknowledge that this land remains the shared space among the Cupeno,

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Cumay, and E-Pai peoples.

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Now, today's episode is focused on the intersections of war, water, and climate refugees, with

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a special focus on the Middle East.

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We'd like to acknowledge that today's topic may be challenging for those who've been

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affected by war, so we encourage our listeners to please take care.

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We've invited Cal State San Marcos History Professor Ibrahim Almirashi to talk with us

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about this challenging topic.

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Professor Almirashi, thank you for being with us today.

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My pleasure.

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We're excited to have you.

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Tell us about yourself, Professor Almirashi.

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What has motivated your area of study to include climate change?

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So the history I work on is related to where my family comes from.

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So my father would have come from what is today Iran, but he was born and raised in

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Zanzibar.

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And Zanzibar, my grandfather, was a cleric, who when he came to Zanzibar, his appeal was

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widespread because it was believed when he prayed it rained.

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So already there I grew up with stories about how my grandfather was able to relieve droughts

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on the island of Zanzibar.

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And of course, Zanzibar is a product of the monsoon winds so that my father lived the

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life of the Indian Ocean.

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A lot of places that might disappear, what would encounter with a scholar named Joshua

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Busby said state death, the Maldives, Seychelles, even Zanzibar itself were stops on the way

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for my dad to visit India where he did his undergrad.

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So the environment, humanity's relationship to the surroundings was a part of growing

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up from the stories from my dad's side.

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On my mom's side, she comes from Iraq.

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And she would always tell me stories of the flooding of the two rivers.

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And so if I went and got my PhD wanting to learn about where I came from at the end of

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the day, I couldn't study the Indian Ocean in Zanzibar, nor could I study Iraq without

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an appreciation of how the environment shapes both those settings.

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Oh, that's so interesting.

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Well, we're excited to dig into this.

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Do you know the most famous Zanzibari?

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I do not.

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The most famous Zanzibari, his name is Farrokh Bulsara.

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Like my father, they both ended up having to move to the United Kingdom to London because

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the Zanzibar was part of the British Empire.

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Farrokh Bulsara, when he was in London, changed his name to Freddie Mercury and established

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the band Queen.

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Now when he says, Bismillah and Bohemian Rhapsody, you might wonder why is he saying the

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opening call to prayer in Arabic?

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Most likely Freddie would have heard that call to prayer coming from my grandfather's

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mouth.

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My grandfather who would make the call to prayer five times a day would have said the

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word Bismillah.

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So I like to think it was from my grandfather's mouth to Freddie's ears to Bohemian Rhapsody.

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That's my connection to the group Queen.

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Wow.

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That's so cool.

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So we're excited to dig into this.

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Conflict in the Middle East has lasted centuries and this has led to migrations, generations

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living in warfare and the exodus of an entire nation.

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Tell us a little bit about this.

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Well, I mean, I like to think of the story of Abraham, who I'm named after.

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Abraham is the Arabic for Abraham.

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He came from what is today's Iraq, a town called Ur, and worked his way up the two rivers,

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the Euphrates and Tigris and the land in between, and then reached the eastern, towards the

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eastern Mediterranean.

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I like to consider him the first climate refugee.

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So in our conversation today, when I want to make the argument that we can affect climate

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action, it's by the words we use and the way we reframe these issues.

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So if you want to go back to millennia from Abraham as a climate refugee, and then you

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have it in the Bible, people refer to as the sea peoples, were probably refugees in some

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way or the other, escaping some kind of cloud, we don't know, volcanic eruption, crop collapse,

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something happened with the environment.

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So you have this kind of confederation of peoples on the seas just attacking the eastern

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Mediterranean, going to the very conflict right now occurring on the eastern Mediterranean,

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where what's hidden behind the story was that these were, there were desperate populations

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approaching water bankruptcy, and what I would argue both Yemen and Gaza.

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And it's not an accident that you have two non-state actors, Hamas and the Houthis, who

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became violent non-state actors for a variety of political reasons, but we could also say

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political ecological reasons.

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Yemen was reaching water bankruptcy.

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The aquifers underneath the Gaza Strip were becoming so heavily salinated that when a

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population is thirsty, violence is one of the options that they turn to or displacement.

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Whether it's the dust bowl during the Great Depression here to the crises in the Middle

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East, this is the way the environment interacts with displacement and or violence.

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Relative to that, you have mentioned what you refer to as hydroterrorism.

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Please explain this to our listeners.

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How has hydroterrorism and global warming caused severe water shortages in the Middle

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East?

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So one way of thinking of the 21st century and one of the most vicious terrorist groups

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of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

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I would argue we should call it the Islamic State of the Euphrates and Tigris.

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It makes a lot more sense because where ISIS spread was very much contained by the flow

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of the Euphrates and Tigris River.

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The first capital, Raqqa, is in Syria and that was a place that had a lot of displaced

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farmers who became displaced due to drought and then preceding the drought mismanaged

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water to cultivate cotton in Syria.

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Cotton is a very heavy water intensive crop.

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Then on the other level, you had a good number of militias on the southern confluence of

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the Euphrates and Tigris, mobilized to fight ISIS.

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A good number of those militias were also displaced farmers, particularly of the Marcia

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areas that were home to the biblical Garden of Eden.

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So there's always a hidden story of the way the environment intersects with conflict and

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cooperation.

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Oh, that's interesting.

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We'd like to hear from you about the region's environment.

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Has ongoing conflict in the Middle East affected the region's agricultural productivity, things

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like soil and water contamination, and the infrastructure, in particular the livelihoods of farming

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communities?

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It's a vicious circle.

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It's that the environment, when it's stressed, leads to displacement.

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And then those displaced people turn to violence.

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And then those people who take up violence then put further stresses on the environment.

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If we go back to the case of the Islamic State, of the Euphrates and Tigris, what I argue is

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hydroterrorism is weaponizing water or kind of conducting an ecocide.

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So I assist when it controlled the Mosul dam.

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The big fear was they would destroy the dam.

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And had they destroyed it, every city downstream, whether it's Mosul or Baghdad, would have been

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flooded.

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You would have talked about the death of millions of people.

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And then the other way you conduct hydroterrorism is when you control the dams, you deprive

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the downstream farmers of water, thus leading to their displacement.

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And that's something else that the Islamic State did.

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When they controlled some other dams on the Euphrates River, they would either prevent

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the water from flowing to the downstream neighbors, or when those militias I talked about started

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to approach ISIS positions, they would deliberately flood the areas, preventing them from conducting

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any military actions.

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So that kind of gives you an example of the intersection between environment and political

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violence.

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How has this led to food insecurity?

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Food insecurity is the product of not just political violence, but hydropolitics, the

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construction of dams.

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So here's just a very good example with the construction of some upstream dams in Turkey.

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What has happened is the amount of water that now flows through the Euphrates and Tigris

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has been curtailed.

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And so as a result, when you have less water flowing and temperatures rising, you have

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more evaporation of these two rivers, and simply put, you have less water to irrigate.

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When water is starting to evaporate, you have lakes that start to dry up, and that exposes

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lake beds to the wind, and that creates dust storms.

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And now we get back to whether it's the dust storms in the US in the 1930s or in Iraq, that

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all collectively leads to not only the displacement of farmers, less cultivation of food, the

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depletion of fish or cattle that depend on water, and that all collectively leads to

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food insecurity.

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And then finally, just very simply, well, need water to survive.

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So you have now these issues that I never thought of talking about, water justice.

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How do we guarantee equal access to those who are downstream rivers, whether we're talking

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about the Euphrates and Tigris or in Egypt, the Nile, which is currently being dammed

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in Ethiopia?

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You're going to have the same dynamic there.

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How has the extreme weather caused by global warming and the resulting increased demand

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for electricity contributed to more violence in the region?

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So you have both violence and tragedy.

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So when you talk about extreme weather, we've witnessed, I mean, this is very fortuitous

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because we're witnessing extreme weather on the American Eastern seaboard.

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A couple of months earlier, we had Mediterranean hurricanes.

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These were unheard of in history.

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So much so that we developed a new name for them called medocains, Mediterranean hurricanes,

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which caused a dam to collapse in Libya, which resulted in the death of about 10,000 people

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overnight.

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So you have those kinds of events.

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And then in terms of extreme weather leading to violence, it's this.

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ISIS and Al Qaeda, they still exist, but they're primarily now spreading to sub-Saharan Africa.

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It's just when they, you know, I want you to think what's going to make more news.

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ISIS threatening to strike the Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, or ISIS infiltrating a

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tribe that's fighting over water rights with another tribe allied to Al Qaeda.

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Those tribes fighting over water in sub-Saharan Africa are not going to generate the news,

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like ISIS threatening to attack the Taylor Swift concert.

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These are the kind of hidden stories of the way fluctuating temperature is leading to

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insecurity.

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It just doesn't necessarily always generate our attention.

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That's actually really sad to think about.

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Can you tell us how coastal ecosystems in Gaza have been impacted by both military activities

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and climate change, such as rising sea levels and pollution?

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Well, sure.

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You have.

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I mean, the war and the fighting in Gaza, the conflict has been going on since, I mean,

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you could trace it back to 2008.

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And every single one of those conflicts lead to the targeting of, let's say, desalination

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facilities, water treatment facilities, so that over the span of a decade, not only has

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Gaza's hydro infrastructure suffered, collectively rising sea waters.

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That leads to saltwater intrusions into, let's say, freshwater aquifers.

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These you have to imagine, freshwater aquifers is where we get our water from.

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We need rain to replenish underwater reserves, reservoirs of water.

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And so in coastal areas, when you have saltwater intrusion, that makes the reservoirs, the aquifers,

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unfit for human consumption.

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How can we fix that?

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Well, on one level, you have to, if you're talking about in Gaza in particular, it's

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well beyond the crisis point, right?

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Right now, it just needs to be trucked in, because you have so much displaced populations.

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But in this case, you fix it with investing in desalination infrastructure.

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You rebuild freshwater.

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You encourage parties in the regions to create a just and equitable water network, an access

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to water.

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I mean, an access to water that is based on notions of hydro justice, where access to

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water is equitable for everyone in the eastern Mediterranean.

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How does the environmental damage caused by warfare like degraded air quality intersect

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with climate change to create long-term damage to health?

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There's a couple of things.

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So when we talk about long-term damage to health, we have to realize a lot of munitions

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that are deployed use depleted uranium.

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And that depleted uranium, it's valuable because it could penetrate, let's say, metal surfaces,

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making it a deadlier weapon, but it also results in those munitions more or less contaminating

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the area where it's being deployed.

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It's a huge problem in conflicts in the Middle East.

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It's a huge problem in Ukraine.

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Okay, so there you have the actual problem of warfare contaminating the environment.

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How does warfare, I wouldn't say warfare contributes to climate change.

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Of course, you have to realize with every ship that is mobilized for warfare that you

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are contributing, you're making a carbon footprint.

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The US military, when it's deployed, makes a larger carbon footprint than some countries.

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So it's in those kind of ways that a carrier task force, when it leaves San Diego Harbor

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and makes this long journey to the region, there's a carbon footprint.

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And then it happens in other ways you probably don't realize.

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If the Suez Canal is closed due to fighting in the Red Sea, ships have to make a longer

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journey across the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.

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Those longer journeys are resulting in greater carbon footprints.

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Those ships are just simply producing more fossil fuels in the air.

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So it's in these subtle ways that you have to make the connection to realize conflict

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does contribute to conflict in the sense that our climate change, I should say.

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It's also happened historically.

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Whenever we scorched earth tactics, whenever we cut down a forest, you're depriving the

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earth of carbon sinks.

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So there has been this kind of long-term connection between climate and conflict and depletion

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of water or expelling carbon into the atmosphere.

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Very interesting.

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Now we'd like to hear about the experience of climate refugees.

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Please share with our audience how the current conflict in Gaza and Israel intersects with

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climate change to aggravate the situation for refugees.

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Well, so perhaps I could go back and say, if you look at the kind of long-term story that

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the Syrian refugee crisis was intertwined with the management, with political ecology,

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the way the environment is managed, and droughts.

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Climate refugees, I mean, what's happening in Gaza is it's not so much the story of

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climate refugees.

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These are internally displaced peoples because the border with Egypt is closed.

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So that makes them internally displaced peoples.

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In other words, these are peoples being displaced in a small strip of territory.

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Climate refugees probably might occur with the desertification that's happening in Iraq,

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in the Sahara.

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It's perhaps almost happening.

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We're just not connecting the dots, that the mass movement of people through Libya towards

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Italy is related to failing crops, yields in sub-Saharan Africa.

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We're probably already seeing it, we just haven't called it out for what it is.

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Relative to international peace efforts, what role does climate change play in calls for

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an end to the conflicts in the region?

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I think it's just needed.

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I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation.

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I just think it's needed because we've forgotten climate change is a global issue now.

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It's put it off the agenda.

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I think that's why a ceasefire is imperative, so that we could go back and focus the world's

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attention on the challenges and threats posed by climate change.

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What can be learned from past climate-related events in the region that could inform future

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conflict resolution efforts?

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You had the Conference of Parties 28 event in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

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That was the big coming together of the nations to deal with the climate crisis.

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What can be learned is that there hasn't been much done in the region.

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There's also a real tragic reason for this.

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It's for this.

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A good number of the economies in the region depend on fossil fuels.

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In other words, what we have to recognize is the countries that are most dependent on

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fossil fuels are also going to be the countries most affected by climate change.

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You have to have that realization and acknowledgement for any change in the region to happen.

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Professor Al-Mirashi, what can you tell us about people doing a climate action?

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Some solutions are very easy.

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The first and most obvious is to vote this upcoming election because this vote is going

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to determine the role of this nation in terms of addressing climate change like no other

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election I can think of.

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The other ways people can take action is to educate themselves.

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One book I highly recommend that just came out is called The Heat and the Fury on the

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Frontlines of Climate Violence by Peter Schwarzstein, which I recommend.

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And then finally, talk about this issue with your friends.

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Use elements of popular culture to have this start off as conversations.

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One film I recommend watching is Don't Look Up on Netflix that came out.

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It's a good analogy for how we're just kind of blind to this issue.

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And the other two films that are the recent Dune series, the Dune series are very much

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good examples of using science fiction to generate debates and conversations on this

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issue.

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The Desert Planet that's known as Dune, Arakis, was once a fertile planet until they abused

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the water.

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So I think you got to find ways to relate how to talk about these issues, raise awareness.

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And then once you have the awareness, then you can take action.

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And I think what taking action is, it could be anything from podcasts like this, which

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is a student initiative, to start introducing change the language we use.

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You know, global warming was one term that was introduced to take actually our attention

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away from climate change.

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You see, it was to make us seem like it's just there's going to be global warming and

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then later there might be global cooling.

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So we got to kind of reintroduce the way we talk about these issues.

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And you know, one is talking about water justice or hydro justice.

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And just very good example is south of the border where, you know, not everyone has water

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justice like we do in San Diego County.

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We have to address that.

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That water should be a water justice, hydro justice should be a human right.

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The other way of thinking it, you mentioned all living things.

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And here's another way we have to change the conversation is this, you know, on the debate

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circuit, both candidates are going to be talking about national security.

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They might be talking about energy security.

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But we got to talk about security in the way that it's all living things or what I call

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sentient security is addressed that whether it's plant life, wildlife, domesticated pets

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are have some kind of security.

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Now when I came to the epiphany of why we need to have a sentient security was the fact

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that, you know, during the presidential debate, one candidate more or less talked about immigrants

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eating cats and dogs.

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And I realized that not only was that just such a poor choice of talking points, but

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why is that tragic is the following.

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It is that there are cats and dogs dying in Ukraine as we speak.

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Deliberately being shot there in the current fighting in Gaza.

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There are, you know, domesticated animals as well as animals that are used such as cows,

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so on and so forth that are dying for lack of water.

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And so this is why I think instead of international security or national security, we need to

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start talking about sentient security where all things in the environment, all living

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things have some kind of way of being secured.

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Well, thank you so much.

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Everybody we heard it here first.

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So what you can do for a climate action.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, of course, of course.

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When we're speaking about education, then this is a level of this is a message for the

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administrators of the campus or the donors is to offer classes on the environmental humanities.

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UC San Diego just passed a mandatory climate change class requirement.

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And I really think this should be happening at the California State campuses, definitely

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this campus throughout all the campuses.

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And I do have to say the Cal State did have a good program and I was part of it where

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faculty members were part of a workshop on climate resilience.

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Where how we professors can teach students how not to be despondent in our classes in

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the face of climate change.

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And so in my class on women in the Middle East, I talk about female, I talk about women in

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particular whose voices are usually suppressed in the Middle East standing up and making

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a difference in terms of climate change.

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And that should be a cause of optimism, climate optimism.

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And so I think that's ultimately what we have to do is not just be despondent in the face

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of this that, you know, realize in each and every one of our ways we can make a difference.

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Okay, well, this has been fascinating for Professor Amarashi.

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I bet our listeners have gained a lot from what you've shared with us today.

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Thank you for talking with us and for your time.

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Okay, excellent.

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Thank you so much.

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Now this leads us straight to our call to climate action for this episode.

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And that is be water mindful.

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Water doesn't appear magically in your sinks.

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It takes electricity to get it to your home.

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So let's all be more water mindful.

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You can start with simple things like turning off the water when brushing your teeth and

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washing dishes.

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You can fill up a bowl or pot with soapy water for the dishes.

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These are just a few quick ideas to try out.

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Want to hear more from climate to action, a CSUSM student podcast, listen wherever you

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get your podcasts and follow us on our socials at climate to action.

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Follow us at climate to action on Instagram, TikTok and X.

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Visit for updates behind the scenes content and more.

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Finally, climate to action wants to remind you to take climate action.

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Be water mindful.

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Until next time, this is climate to action signing off.